Tredyffrin-Easttown to harden' school safety sites

Tredyffrin-Easttown School District officials, top township police officers and others addressed school safety issues Wednesday night at Valley Forge Middle School. The audience of several hundred, who half-filled the auditorium, also had the chance to participate in a question-response session.

School district Superintendent Dan Waters announced that there will be a “safety audit at each school” in the district, as there had been after the Columbine (1999) and Virginia Tech (2007) school-shooting incidents and told the audience that “you won’t like all the measures we put in place.”

Tom Daley, district architect of Daley, Jaboot Architects LLP described the “hardening” as the “installation of a buzz-in system, operational before the end of January, an exterior intercom system, two cameras {and] impact-resistant film added to the tempered glass .”

Conestoga High School assistant principal and safety coordinator Andrew Phillips added that visitors will now be asked to show a photo ID before entering a school building. Those who cannot state legitimate business or a reason for visiting will be denied entrance. He said the district was “upfront and proactive regarding safety.”

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Kevin Buraks, School Board president, welcomed those attending and asked for a minute of silence for the Sandy Hook Elementary School victims. School-district business manager Art McDonnell moderated the session, which had been set up as a panel. Besides Daley, Phillips and Waters, Easttown Police Chief David Obzud and Tredyffrin Police superintendent Anthony Giaimo participated.

Giaimo said, “We train for this…,” and described collaborative table-top exercises, field exercises and routine patrolling of school property with emphasis on a visible presence in schools, even to the extent of officers sitting down to have lunch with the students.

“We’re more proactive than reactive,” Giaimo said of his department’s relationship to the possibilities for an emergency.

Obzud said that Easttown police follow the same patterns of preparedness, and that they have only two schools, Beaumont Elementary and Devon Elementary in their jurisdiction, with response time to Beaumont, which is across the street from the Easttown Township building, at “zero.”

The audience supplied the panel with nearly 50 questions, several closing in on the bullet-resistant capabilities of the impact-resistant film that Daley had mentioned, a few questioning why the film would only be installed at entrances.

Other questions probed an area that had been omitted from the panel’s discussion almost entirely – how to identify and help those (students, particularly) who might be labeled “at risk” in the school community.

To those questions, Phillips assured the audience that the school district has intervention strategies. Waters added that continuing attempts are made to connect students who “suffer in silence” with help that is available. “There are programs in place,” he said without elaborating too much. He also noted that teachers, parents, police and school health personnel all play roles in preventing what Phillips called, “kids slipping through the cracks.”

Another area of concern to those in the audience was security on the playground, in open spaces and during field trips and other out-of-school situations.

Phillips responded to many of those concerns by referring to their being “on the list” of situations that are being discussed.

One questioner asked, “How do you train staff to make good decisions ?” Another asked about in-service emergency training for the considerable number of volunteers in the schools. Still others wanted to know about locking procedures for classroom doors.

To a question about “restrictions on Conestoga students, Waters replied that off-campus senior lunch and that “period one and eight” late entry and early dismissal policies were “on the list.”

Waters also noted that former Tredyffrin police chief Andy Chambers would be retained as a “safety consultant,“ although the school district would continue to “depend on the police department for direction.”

Buraks encouraged parents and citizens to attend the school board’s business meetings and particularly the various committee meetings where any new policies, or what Phillips referred to as “a change in the culture” would begin to take place.